In the highly competitive food industry, the market value of many foods, particularly meat, is based upon a variety of characteristics of the food product, such as tenderness, texture and other organoleptic properties, many of which have little to do with the intrinsic nutritional content of the food. Because of this competitive environment, and because of the ever increasing cost of food in general and meat in particular, many efforts have been made to upgrade the market value of less desirable and less valuable meat products by further processing to provide a secondary product that is less desirable than choice cuts of meat, but is also less expensive and therefore acceptable to consumers.
For example, it is common practice to upgrade the market value of tough beef by grinding it into hamburger meat having a fluffy, porous texture as compared with choice beef that has been lot-fed before slaughter to increase the muscle fat of the flesh, and while this ground meat is obviously less desirable than choice cuts of beef, it is nevertheless acceptable to consumers as a less expensive substitute for choice cuts of beef. Similarly, less valuable parts of meat, such as scraps, organs and the like are commonly emulsified to form frankfurters, bologna, meat loafs and similar less expensive meat products.
In marketing seafood, it is well known that small shrimp have less consumer appeal than large shrimp and are therefore less valuable, and small pieces or scraps of shrimp and other seafood often has even less value. Therefore, methods have been devised for processing these products to upgrade their market acceptance by comminuting the small pieces and reforming them as secondary seafood products.
However, the aforesaid reprocessing of less valuable meat parts, while providing a marketable product that avoids the economic consequences of relegating such meat parts to disposable waste, generally results in the forming of secondary products that are dissimilar in many organoleptic properties from the original form of the product, as, for example, is the case in grinding up beef to form hamburger meat. Moreover, the reprocessing itself often results in the food product losing much of its flavor and nutritional content because when heat is applied to the product it will drive off flavor-imparting aromatics and volatiles which are often critical to the taste, smell and sensory enjoyment of the cooked food. Finally, the texture, mouthfeel and consistency of the reprocessed food product is usually considerably different from the original, natural meat, thereby reducing the value and marketability of the reprocessed food product.
In general, methods of processing less valuable pieces of meat, or meat scraps, have resulted in the production of secondary meat products that are economically feasible, but that are clearly less valuable than natural meat because of the aforesaid differences in the organoleptic properties of the secondary meat products.
Thus, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,092,435, issued May 30, 1978 to Teijeiro, a process is disclosed for flaking small shrimp and shrimp pieces, mixing the flaked shrimp in an aqueous mixture, and then shaping the mixture by the use of an extruder. As the mixture leaves the extruder, it is formed into curved pieces which have a contour somewhat similar to whole shrimp, but which are significantly dissimilar from whole shrimp in overall detail. The extruded pieces are then deposited on an assembly line to be breaded, and then are fried and quick frozen in a conventional manner. While this process has apparently produced a commercially practical product, it nevertheless has some drawbacks in that the final extruded shrimp product is noticably different from fresh shrimp in appearance, consistency and taste, and in that the process itself is relatively expensive and time consuming.
Also, Christianson U.S. Pat. No. 2,860,991, issued Nov. 18, 1958, discloses a method of preparing a shaped meat product from comminuted meat particles, such method including the steps of raising the temperature of the comminuted meat to a predetermined temperature to cause coagulation thereof, and then discharging the heated meat emulsion to a mold for shaping. This patent points out that no heat is applied to the meat after it reaches the mold for the express purpose of avoiding burning or scorching of the meat, and no effort is made to maintain the meat under pressure when it is in the mold, which performs only a shaping function. Similarly, in Synder U.S. Pat. No. 3,234,585, a ground meat and a mixture is inserted into a forming mold for shaping. Although some heat is applied to the mold solely to assist in forming and discharging the food product from the mold, the food product is cooked in a conventional manner after the food product has been shaped and discharged from the mold.
In contrast to the above, the present invention provides a process by which small pieces of food, particularly meat, can be restructured as whole food products which have exceptional similarity to the original form of the product in terms of taste, texture, consistency and appearance, and this process provides high production rates which make it commercially desirable.